Joel Swerdlow

Joel L. Swerdlow is an American author, editor, journalist, researcher, and educator. His works include To Heal a Nation: The Story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, co-authored with Jan Scruggs, which became a 1988 NBC movie. His articles have been published in American newspapers and magazines, and international publications have translated his work into more than three dozen languages for international publication. For ten years, he worked as a senior writer and assistant editor of National Geographic, and was the lead writer for the magazine's 1998–1999 Millennium series.

Life and work

Swerdlow was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in areas including Burma (the Union of Myanmar) and France. He received his undergraduate degree in political science (B.A., cum laude) from Syracuse University, and his M.A. in American government and Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1974. His doctoral dissertation examined voting behavior in presidential primary elections. It discussed the question: how representative of the general population are the views of people who vote in presidential primaries?

Swerdlow has taught at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University,

His UT course is entitled "Politics, Power and Poetry" and the textbooks are Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Readings to Accompany Walks Across Washington (2010). At Johns Hopkins, he taught two graduate seminars: (1) "Notions of Progress," which grew out of his observation that throughout recorded history complex societies have adopted and then abandoned a technology on three times; (2) History of Communications Technologies, which put the advent of the Internet in the context of its evolution from previous technologies, beginning with writing. He served as Faculty Director for the Special Academic Honors Seminar for The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars (2006).

He was a senior writer and assistant editor for National Geographic, and its lead writer for the 1998–1999 Millennium series. and From the Field: Writing From National Geographic Magazine.

Swerdlow covered the White House and the Watergate conspiracy trial for National Public Radio (NPR). he is quoted as saying that even "the Lincoln-Douglas encounters were popular mostly because they were excellent theater and not because what was said was particularly wise or revealing." and is a frequent commentator and panelist on television specials on a wide range of topics, including the April 10, 2000 C-SPAN program The Future of Exploration, focusing on the goals of environmentalists, scientists, and explorers in the pursuit of "unraveling the mysteries" of our planet. with his efforts recounted in works such as Ted Van Dyk's "Heroes, Hacks and Fools: Memoirs from the political arena,"

In 1974, he was the campaign manager of Mario Cuomo's unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of New York in the Democratic primary on a ticket headed by Howard J. Samuels.

Swerdlow was the assistant producer and writer of the documentary The Gift of a Lifetime, on the subject of organ and tissue donation. His residency included the delivery of the public lecture, "The Rest are Left to Die: Health Care Rationing and the News Media."

His research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Wallace Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Defense. adviser to the President of the Museum of Television and Radio; which was part of The Human Body series. He is coauthor of The Bug Stops Here: Force Protection and Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of National Defense University in Washington, D.C. For the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation he wrote "Special Reports" on rural infant care, at-risk adolescents, and other topics related to the provision of health care, such as the 1986 report, "Four-year effort cuts infant deaths in isolated rural counties by medical school-public health linkages."

His academic articles and presentations include "A New Approach to Combating Infectious diseases," and "Lessons from Malaria," which argues that "malaria offers important lessons in the relationship between plants and human disease because two of the three broad categories of drugs that modern medicine now uses to treat and prevent malaria come from plants."

Swerdlow's essay, "Audience for the Arts in the Age of Electronics" analyzes how "growing intimacy with and dependency upon electronics" is changing virtually every form of artistic expression.

He has lectured at the Baylor College of Medicine, Notre Dame University Topics have included: "1 Billion Cokes a Day: World Culture at the Millennium," "Everyone On Earth Could Fit Easily into Texas," Finding Geography in Surprising Places,""Why Do Some Plants Cure Cancer?," "Moving from Absurd to Obvious," and "The Rest are Left to Die: Health Care Rationing and the News Media."

Swerdlow decided to become a writer in part because he believed that power in American society, specifically, the ability to have a positive impact, was increasingly moving from political and governmental institutions to the mass media. In an August 1999 article entitled, "The Power of Writing," in National Geographic magazine, he wrote that "No other invention-perhaps only the wheel comes close-has had a longer and greater impact. ... Writing has an almost magical power: Words on paper, created by ordinary citizens, have overthrown governments and changed the course of history." Swerdlow writes of the need to balance faith in technology with faith in ourselves, nothing that "What we hold most valuable--things like morality and compassion--can be found only within us," and that"while embracing the future, we can remain loyal to our unchanging humanity," saying that "we'll always need some skin." or the same person speaking from two different chronological points in his life (Horizon Beyond).

His writing has been reprinted and used as required reading in undergraduate and graduate courses in fields ranging from political science and journalism to history and religion: for example, "War and Revolution in the Western World," and "Writing about society." "To Heal a Nation" is frequently recommended in other works, such as Edward Linenthal's Sacred Ground: Americans and their Battlefields, which notes: "The sensitivity regarding martial monuments is perhaps best revealed in the celebrated controversies over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. For a thorough introduction to this story, see Jan C. Scruggs and Joel L. Swerdlow, "To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial."

Swerdlow's internet blog, Larger Pie, uses "economic growth" as a lens through which to examine what Swerdlow describes as "democracy, morality, fairness, the American Dream, and what life is all about," and shares information that will ultimately be included in a future book, "Growing the Pie." He wrote a web documentary cited as "Web Worthy" in 2005 by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Swerdlow lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Marjorie L. Share. They have two sons. either through original writing or with excerpts from larger works, in addition to articles included in collections such as "Best of the Washington Post" and "From the Field: Writings from National Geographic Magazine." Code Z (1979) To Heal a Nation: The Story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Harper and Row, 1985) Presidential Debates: 1988 and Beyond (1987) Media Technology and the Vote: A Source Book (1988) Matching needs, saving lives: Building a comprehensive network for transplantation and biomedical research : a report on policy options (1989) Nature's Medicine: Plants That Heal: A chronicle of mankind's search for healing plants through the ages (National Geographic Books, 2000)

Nature's Medicine For his 2000 book, "Nature's Medicine: Plants That Heal," Swerdlow spent five years traveling around the world, including Madagascar and India, to study plant-based medicine. With two siblings who were "Western-trained doctors," he reported that he started out his journeys as a "believer in Western, science-based medicine."

However, he is now convinced that there are non-Western approaches to medicine that must be taken seriously, to add to our arsenal of healing strategies. "I am not talking about herbal remedies," he said. But, "What I think we can do is invent a new kind of medicine." "Two-thirds of the world uses plant-based medicines because they simply don't have any choice."

With this "scarring war" as the backdrop to the idea of a memorial that could "heal a nation," Kay continues:

The sheer folly of the project that Scruggs and friends so boldly set for themselves makes this an adventure story with nearly as many unlikely escapes from extinction as an Indiana Jones adventure. First of all, they planned to achieve their purpose by erecting, of all things, a monument—in a city sinking under the weight of monuments and wanting no more. A New York Times Sunday lead editorial cited the book's description of how opposition to the design of the memorial—called a "black gash of shame" and "Orwellian glop"—had dissipated with surprising speed.

In 1988 the book became a made-for-TV NBC movie.

Remote Control: Television and the Manipulation of American Life (with Frank Mankiewicz) The review in the Washington Post'''s Book World called this book "provocative," noting that it "radically changes one's perception of events. ... the evidence builds up, and under the authors' skillful guidance one begins to see a clear pattern in television's influence on our lives. ... To an extent most of us do not realize, television has also taken hold on the minds of our children, accustomed a whole generation to instant solutions and to rapidly changing but disconnected events, changed our sense of reality (events must now be 'certified' by television), made us addicted to violence and, most important, is increasingly shaping the events which it pretends only to report."

Articles (partial list) Many of the articles written by Swerdlow for National Geographic can be found on that magazine's website. His articles, both for National Geographic and other publications, include: "Chinese Boxes" (with Frank Mankiewicz), Harper's Magazine, October 1976. "A Question of Impact," The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 1981. "America's Poet: Walt Whitman," National Geographic, December 1994. "Vincent van Gogh: Lullaby in Color," National Geographic, October 1997. "Making Sense of the Millennium," National Geographic, January 1998. "New York's Chinatown," National Geographic, August 1998. The Power of Writing," National Geographic, August 1999. Changing America, National Geographic Magazine, September 2001'' Op-ed, with Frank Mankiewicz, "New Deal? New Frontier? The days of presidential slogans may be gone," Washington Post, July 16, 2010.